Reds Unite with Nazis on Anti-religion Drive but Bar Racialism

Soviet Russia will join Germany in a united front for liquidation of religion, but will not accept the Nazi racial principles, a recent plenary session in Moscow of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, Communist youth organization, was advised by its general secretary, H.H. Mikhailov, according to Soviet newspapers reaching Paris today.

The Soviet papers also revealed that leading Ukrainian political figures in Soviet-occupied Galicia had forwarded to Moscow a proposal to transport the half million Jews of that territory to the autonomous Jewish region of Biro-Bidjan in Soviet Siberia. The Soviet Government’s attitude towards the proposal was not revealed, however.

The discussion of racial and religious policy at the Komsomol session developed, according to accounts in the Soviet papers, when Mikhailov reported that as a result of the Soviet-German pact arrangements had also been completed between Moscow and Berlin for the creation of a united front to combat religion and for exchange of information on the subject.

One of the participants in the session asked: “Does this mean that the Nazi views on the Jewish question are acceptable by our party?” Mikhailov replied: “Our cooperation with Germany on the anti-religion front will have its limitations. The Soviets conduct their fight against religion on the basis of materialistic principles only and not on a racial basis. We reject the racial principles and this automatically excludes the possibility of coordination of our activities with those of the Reich in questions concerning the Jews.”

Mikhailov then went on to state that the Soviet-German pact provided for the complete reorganization of the anti-religious program, retaining atheist propaganda in the hands of the “Bezbozhnik” (godless) organization and carrying out concrete anti-religious plans through “other organizations,” apparently German.

Meanwhile, information reaching Paris from Protestant Church sources in Switzerland said that Rudolf Hess, Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, had issued an order for the translation of Soviet anti-religious literature into German and its publication as soon as possible.

The text of an anti-religious program worked out by the Bezbozhnik organization in Moscow for Soviet-occupied Poland reached Paris. It provides, among other things, for the closing down of all churches and synagogues in the territory and confiscation of their property.